back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour because of the world's toxic addiction to nuclear power there are thousands of nuclear storage sites across the globe posing a danger to human beings now and far into the future how do we warn future generations of humans who won't be born for thousands of years about the dangers of the nuclear waste that we are creating now and mirror mirror on the wall who's to blame for the republicans fault rush limbaugh thinks it's obama but i'll tell you who's really responsible for the mess of today's republican party is in in tonight's deeply to.

welcome back to your take my take it live the phone lines are now open so if you want to share an opinion make a comment ask a question live on the air give us a call to zero two nine zero four twenty one thirty four and let's start with steve in spokane washington a steve ok how are you doing just great what's on your mind. i worked in a non profit capital. progressive bleed the hospital hired for profit seals. and what they did to the power of art and that were in a strong union was to opt for the senior. r. and early retirement. as the r. and. a christian increase they were replaced with.

now acts which were basically. non-union people last. year and increased e.r. and case closed and that was one way that they weakened. the union. for the r.n. which was. basically the standard which spokane what are three or four hospitals. passing steve thank you for sharing that with us appreciate it call it and this i mean there's so many ways particularly a right to work for less state that employers can bust up unions and just having the right to work for less laws on the books starts the whole process mark in toronto canada hey mark welcome to the program it some thoughts on. you know i want to talk about the report to last week you mentioned republican mentality and paranoia and stuff like that but i wondered if you ever think that

there might be like a logical reason for republicans thinking the way they do not to be coming here to actually a left brain right brain thing just as much a psychological as it is ideological there is a there's a book called the republican mind of it posits that there's actually a difference in brain wiring between republicans and democrats there's also i think frankly my favorite was john dean's book conservatives without a conscience and and i appreciate you bringing that up mark and pointed out what john dean john dean who was the counsel that the lawyer for richard nixon and. kind of blew the whistle on him with watergate what john dean pointed out is that there are sociopaths out there basically people without conscience of those who gravitate to authoritarian hierarchical institutions in the republican party has become one over the years or. the century and a half and so you find

a lot more that kind of behavior judy in delaware county pennsylvania judy thank you for calling you want to call talk about strikes hi how you can i come from a county that has a lot of. construction i see them every day protesting and then the previous comment got rid of. i want to say i think the way to get our child stock and strengthen the public and the people and to have medicare number one for which would lower the cost for health care to employers but also how. that's how we lost our jobs that's how we kept. also a tax coming so what makes us more viable is helping out.

with the judean i think you summarized a really really well thank you for calling and doing that and thank you and i would add one of the things is one of the things you have to pay attention to is how tight the labor market is when the labor market is tight when there's a lot of demand for labor in other words employers are competing with each other then you will see unions emerges circumstances where unions can emerge and were wages go up when the labor market is really lose then wages tend to fall and there are a lot of ways that we can tighten up our labor market here in the united states you mentioned tariffs that's one of the very best historically that's what we did in the united states for over two hundred years another one is to lower the retirement age or lower the number of hours in the workweek french drop the work we've done to thirty hours all of a sudden you get you need ten percent more employees and boom unemployment goes away if we drop the social security eligibility age and medicare eligibility age from sixty five down to sixty you'd probably see on. lemon drop by at least five

points so there's a lot of things that can be done there just frankly policy things i talked today with senator jeff merkley and he's talking about well let's reduce the medicare eligibility age makes perfect sense to me michael in las vegas now that hey michel thanks for calling. i just wanted to know. i'm not an educated man by any means but there's no. brainers name. out of that i can expect anything. from the republican party. rush the country over a barrel for the two percent. we're going to get the banner yeah michael thank you for the call appreciate it. i think i'll just let that stand. a good point valerie in chico california a valerie thanks for calling but. i wondered if you wait on that

think that the health care reform act has implemented is going to make ordinary americans more interested or more motivated to whistleblowers about medicare fraud or to or do you think that the public in general is more interested in cutting health costs by getting rid of a necessary procedures and so forth well i think excellent point to valerie thanks for raising it i think that that's typically what you see i mean in countries where you have socialized medicine or national health care programs the people are a little more vigilant that there's a sense of this is my health care system this is my country this is you know i care about this stuff and my recollection is that there are some whistleblower provisions in obamacare but i don't write off the top i had to call the details of them so. i can assert that actually but for any questions about obamacare or national health care. our health care in united states go to health care dot gov

it's the new website the white house has put up a bottle bomb here to answer any questions cyrus in british columbia canada hey cyrus thank you for calling the low good evening to you thanks very much finally i get it to talk to you. thank thank you very much for doing what you do i just want to bring a couple of. a couple of things i think and then to people who listen to your show. first of all. you have been talking about wal-mart. niceish and in every little town in northern b.c. and northern alberta that i have been to the market has come in and it has wiped off all the craftsmen all the people that have been. bringing and raising these little communities and. it's been basically wiping off the map

and they have closed shop and they have ended up. working part time full for roll mart and i hope that more and more people listen to this and feel it and they start to make a movement and maybe condemning wal-mart until. i'm not sure but i think in in province of quebec wal-mart. i think was not allowed to open any stores because they would not accept being unionized and there was one wal-mart store there was unionized and wal-mart closed when the unions put in place and it's an excellent point and let me just add to it this is not just wal-mart this is the whole big box model the model of moving in a giant business and inhaling a giant multi-dimensional business and inhaling all the smaller businesses around it and you know before it was wal-mart it was it was kmart and there were other

companies that were. small small businesses so it's an important point and it's every time my understanding of my recollection is that i wrote about this in my book on equal protection as i recall whenever wal-mart comes into a community about one hundred twenty local businesses are going to go out of business so believe in conifer and thank you for the lead in conifer colorado a leon talk about tea party. thanks i want to say why don't they embrace the fiscal cliff. we believe and we believe that. this is the first step of getting our oh you mean republican. tea party republicans whoever passed the they believe the president has basically called the republicans bluff on this and the big the big challenge the that is happening right now is john boehner has got this caucus that's got a bunch of crazy tea partiers and thankfully from calling point that out and and

he's got eric cantor standing behind him with a knife in his kidney. just waiting for him to move the wrong way a lot of those people are not going to be in the congress next year so i think boehner is going to have an easier time my guess we'll see but my guess is this is going to be played out for as we could january alfredo in mountain view california hail freddo thanks for calling tonight here our last caller we have just a little less than a minute left. i just wanted to point out of the end that to me there's no difference between both parties republicans and democrats represent corporate interests. and i like the body to. not only caught my interest but i'm going to change the we tried to. get your point and i don't disagree with the both parties are to a large extent beholden to corporate power and billionaires but that said we have

basically a two party system because the first past the post winner take all elections we can either go with this or are voting for a more parties in or you can show up at your local democratic party or republican party for that matter and say i'd like to become a committee precinct person i'd like to be a participant and take over the party i recommend that you do that. that's it for your take my take alive thanks for all your calls we didn't get your calls tonight for us back next week. growing up there's a whole lot of denial going around the republican party especially when it comes to finding saul was on or thing to blame for the party's rapid decline and were good o.l. rush when the rest of the right wing media might want to blame the evil little rolls on them as a lucy for the conservative class probably better off just looking in the mirror to explain why in tonight's g.o.p. take. a. look at the worst year for those things. white house of

a little radio guy minestrone pick. what we're about to give you never seen anything like good control. or you. both are all.

leaving. the wrong. place.

it's thursday so let's get geeky and giving future generations directions thanks to our global addiction to nuclear power all across the world there are thousands of nuclear waste storage sites which contain nuclear ways that will be deadly for a million years or more this raises a really important question how do we warn future generations of humans far further into the future than the pyramid builders were in our past about the dangers that nuclear waste presents we can't write directions for dealing with nuclear waste on paper it's paper only lists lasts at the most a couple hundred years and that's only if it's preserved properly clay tablets like those used throughout the middle ages are more durable they could last longer than paper but again that's only if they're preserved properly what about using the

digital media devices that today are dried c.d.'s we store critical information about our nuclear waste sites on a series of u.s.b. drives. well we could but the lifetime of tech devices like u.s.b. is actually shorter than that of paper and clay tablets so they don't really solve the problem either so are future generations doomed to suffer from nuclear contamination because they don't know how to handle the millions of tons of nuclear waste we're leaving on this planet hopefully not researchers at the french company are non-o. have come up with a method of storing vital information that very well could withstand the tests of time they start with a thin twenty centimeter diameter disc made from a form of aluminum oxide known as industrial sapphire these discs which are similar in appearance to c.d.'s are acid resistant scratch resistant and five times stronger than tempered glass once the disks are formed the researchers in gray various techniques and image m.

images into the deaths does surface and fill the achaeans with platinum which is far more resistant to corrosion than gold and doesn't rust like iron after the edges are filled in information containing disc is protected by fusing a second disc directly onto the face of each of these disks can then be edged with tens of thousands of pages of information and tests show that that information could last for up to a million years the rough primary life time of our nuclear waste and one of the biggest positives about this type of disk is it won't need to be read with any special hi tech machines that may not even exist thousands of years from now if we manage to collapse of it was asian they can be read with a simple microscope so it seems that scientists may have found a way to warn future generations about our stupidity in creating all this nuclear waste which raises a second question is that pretty damn absurd for us to be generating electricity to run our i pods that day in a way that leaves deadly waste for thousands of generations of humans to have to

deal with given the abundance of sun and wind it's knots that we're subsidizing. the nuclear industry to the tune of billions of dollars a year it's time to start shutting down our nuclear power plants and step away quickly from this most deadly and expensive form of commercial electrical generation on the planet. from the oxy cotton and via agro soaked brain of rush limbaugh i come warning of these self-destruction of the republican party but former republican insider and reagan staffer bruce bartlett who was on the show last night knows the grim truth

which is the modern republican party has already destroyed itself on his radio show tuesday limbaugh explained what's at stake for republicans during for example the fiscal cliff debate. barack obama wants the republican party to essentially destroy itself when you think of republican party what do you think of terms of its stance for tax cuts if he can get the republicans to raise taxes on the rich then obama feels he is helping the republicans destroy their brand this is jude when in skis to santa claus theory on steroids limbaugh is actually right by raising taxes rush limbaugh is republican party the party that's denied thirty years of economic royalty of reality attempted to set up an iran day in paradise in america and fear mongers everything from muslims to socialists to gays to women. the party indeed will destroy itself however the

actual republican party the party that existed long before limbaugh and the rest of his rabid ilk won't be affected at all but watch by what white house republicans do with these so-called fiscal cliff that's because tragically the republican party as we used to know it has already destroyed itself here's what bruce bartlett a former senior policy analyst for ronald reagan and executive director of the joint economic committee of congress told me right here on the show last night things have changed so dramatically since the days when i first got involved with the republican politics when the republican party was the party of ideas and now it's the party of crazy people ignorant tea party people people who know nothing and are proud of it barbara knows a thing or two about the republican party he worked as a staffer for jack kemp and ron paul he worked for conservative think tanks like

the heritage foundation the cato institute and he wrote columns regularly for conservative publications like the wall street journal the washington times and the national review as recently as just a decade ago bartlett was advising the george w. bush administration on economic matters but in two thousand and three bartlett the man who claims to have made significant contributions to legitimise in supply side economics actually wrote and co-wrote two books on this began to have an excess tension crisis he was disturbed by the new republican party's out of control spending and irresponsible tax cuts he saw a government run wastefully and he saw the republicans committed to an unwavering denial of keynesian economics that he knew could help us out of our economic problems in the same way they did in the one nine hundred thirty s. he spoke out about it and was basically excommunicated from the republican party for speaking out. today after thirty two years of reaganomics bartlett knows that more tax cuts and trickle down economics are not the answer. brigance policies

worked in the eighty's they will not work today we have different problems today tax cuts will do no good whatsoever it is the worst possible solution to any problem at all we have a lack of aggregate demand we need to be hiring people and building public works that's what the economy needs i just don't believe in cookie cutter economics barba does however believe in the republican party of eisenhower unlike today's republicans eisenhower's republican party could stomach a modest increase in taxes in today's taxes on the rich since the top marginal income tax rate during eisenhower's was over ninety percent that was a party that promoted spending more federal money for the good of the nation it was during the eisenhower administration that the interstate highway system was built just look at the republican party's official nine hundred fifty six platform and you'll see what that party used to stand for and how it's been utterly decimated by

lunatics today the planks of that platform included programs of assistance to the millions of workers with special employment problems such as older workers and it kept workers members of minority groups and migratory workers it included help for the low wage workers and extended protection of the federal minimum wage laws to as many workers as is possible and practicable it included help for victims of discrimination with the pledge to continue to fight for the elimination of discrimination in employment because of race creed color national origin ancestry or sex and included support for an equal rights amendment for women and the official platform even gave a fervent defense of labor unions by saying the protection of the right of workers to organize into unions and to bargain collectively is the firm and permanent policy of the eisenhower administration. clearly today scott walker john casey rick

snyder reside in a much much different republican party republicans like paul ryan who has twice tried to end medicare as we know it and supported plans to hand social security over to wall street also hang out in a very different party than eisenhower and rush limbaugh things paul ryan is the last boyscout of the republican party but i somehow or would have just called paul ryan's stupid as eisenhower wrote to his brother edgar in one nine hundred fifty four she'd any political party attempt to abolish social security unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws think michigan rick snyder and farm programs you would not hear that party again in our political history there's a tiny splinter group of course that believes you can do these things if you texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas their number is negligible and they are stupid as barlow told me republicans used to care about helping poor people the republican party through reagan and the first

president bush. didn't want to abolish the well first they also believe that if you were going to spend money you had to raise the taxes to pay for every republican until george w. bush was willing to support tax increases to pay for government and rush limbaugh's republican party of today is tragically i mean we really need two parties in a dynamic debate between and tragically is no place for sane people like bruce bartlett who still believes in democracy and who doesn't think that america is best governed by a poor talk receiver of the so-called job creators. somehow or other they believe as and rand did that the rich are like john galt they're the only ones who are productive the hall the rest of us are just lazy bums and moochers and they carry us on their backs and somehow or other this propaganda has penetrated millions and

millions of ignorant fools in the tea party who are the shock troops over this revolution but as rush limbaugh warns this revolution may soon go bust when republicans are forced to raise taxes either at the end of this year or the beginning of next so could this break in radical orthodoxy that has seized the party since when is peace time actually give rise to the republican party of yesteryear that will welcome back into the fold rational republicans like bruce bartlett bartlett himself isn't convinced. they can't because the billionaires who control the party want tax cuts for themselves and as long as you've got millions and millions of crazy tea party people who for some reason vote against their own direct economic interest and support the billionaires against themselves. you know we're kind of stuck unfortunately it's not just the republican party that's stuck

as long as those crazy people are running the people's house of representatives we americans the american people are stuck to watch a new helplessly as our nation on rattles and waiting anxiously for bruce bartlett reality based community of republicans to rise again let's hope they wake up soon and throw the crazies out of their party. and that's the way it is today thursday december thirteenth twenty twelve for more information and in the stories we covered visit our web site at thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org and. if you missed any tonight's show you can watch it in h.d. on hulu and who are dot com slash the big picture also check out our two you tube channels or a link to thom hartmann dot com we also check all the different ways you can send us your feedback. and don't forget democracy begins with you and a spectator sport get out there and get active tag your sort of.

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